In the
history of psychical phenomena the records of so-called
"spiritualism" in Europe, America, and elsewhere hold an important
place. Advisedly I say that no term was ever more misapplied than that of
"spiritualism" to the cult in Europe and America just mentioned,
inasmuch as there is nothing of the spirit about it.

The doctrines
given in preceding chapters are those of true spiritualism; the misnamed
practises of modern mediums and so-called spiritists constitute the Worship of
the Dead, old-fashioned necromancy, in fact, which was always prohibited by
spiritual teachers. They are a gross materializing of the spiritual idea, and
deal with matter more than with its opposite. This cult is supposed by some to
have originated about forty years ago in America at Rochester, N. Y., under the
mediumship of the Fox sisters, but it was known in Salem during the witchcraft
excitement, and in Europe one hundred years ago the same practises were
pursued, similar phenomena seen, mediums developed, and seances held.

For centuries
it has been well known in India where it is properly designated "bhuta
worship," meaning the attempt to communicate with the devil or Astral remnants
of deceased persons. This should be its name here also, for by it the gross and
devilish, or earthly, parts of man are excited, appealed to,

and
communicated with. But the facts of the long record of forty years in America
demand a brief examination. These facts all studious Theosophists must admit.
The theosophical explanation and deductions, however, are totally different
from those of the average spiritualist. A philosophy has not been evolved in
the ranks or literature of spiritualism; nothing but theosophy will

give the true
explanation, point out defects, reveal dangers, and suggest remedies.

As it is
plain that clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-transference, prophecy, dream
and vision, levitation, apparitional appearance, are all powers that have been
known for ages, the questions most pressing in respect to spiritualism are
those relating to communication with the souls of those who have left this
earth and are now disembodied, and with unclassified spirits who have not been
embodied here but belong to other spheres. Perhaps also the question of
materialization of forms at seances deserves some attention.

Communication
includes trance-speaking, slate and other writing, independent voices in the
air, speaking through the physical vocal organs of the medium, and
precipitation

of written
messages out of the air. Do the mediums communicate with the spirits of the
dead? Do our departed friends perceive the state of life they have left, and do
they sometimes return to speak to and with us?

The answers
are intimated in foregoing chapters. Our departed do not see us here. They are
relieved from the terrible pang such a sight would inflict. Once in a while a
pure-minded, unpaid medium may ascend in trance to the state in which a
deceased soul is, and may remember some bits of what was there heard;

but this is
rare. Now and then in the course of decades some high human spirit may for a
moment return and by unmistakable means communicate with mortals.

At the moment
of death the soul may speak to some friend on earth before the door is finally
shut. But the mass of communications alleged as made day after day through
mediums are from the astral unintelligent remains of men, or in many

cases
entirely the production of, invention, compilation, discovery, and collocation
by the loosely attached Astral body of the living medium. Certain objections
arise to the theory that the spirits of the dead communicate.

Some are:

I. At no time
have these spirits given the laws governing any of the phenomena, except in a
few instances, not accepted by the cult, where the theosophical theory was
advanced. As it would destroy such structures as those erected by A. J. Davis,
these particular spirits fell into discredit.

II. The
spirits disagree among themselves, one stating the after-life to be very
different from the description by another. These disagreements vary with the
medium and the supposed theories of the deceased during life. One spirit admits
reincarnation and others deny it.

III. The
spirits have discovered nothing in respect to history, anthropology, or other
important matters, seeming to have less ability in that line than living men;
and although they often claim to be men who lived in older civilizations, they
show ignorance thereupon or merely repeat recently published discoveries.

IV. In these
forty years no rationale of phenomena nor of development of mediumship has been
obtained from the spirits. Great philosophers are reported as speaking through
mediums, but utter only drivel and merest commonplaces.

V. The
mediums come to physical and moral grief, are accused of fraud, are shown
guilty of trickery, but the spirit guides and controls do not interfere to
either prevent or save.

VI. It is
admitted that the guides and controls deceive and incite to fraud.

VII. It is
plainly to be seen through all that is reported of the spirits that their
assertions and philosophy, if any, vary with the medium and the most advanced
thought of living spiritualists.

From all this
and much more that could be adduced, the man of materialistic science is
fortified in his ridicule, but the theosophist has to conclude that the
entities, if there be any communicating, are not human spirits, and that the

explanations
are to be found in some other theories.

Materialization
of a form out of the air, independent of the medium's physical body, is a fact.
But it is not a spirit. As was very well said by one of the "spirits"
not flavoured by spiritualism, one way to produce this phenomenon is by the
accretion of electrical and magnetic particles into one mass upon which matter
is aggregated and an image reflected out of the Astral sphere.

This is the
whole of it; as much a fraud as a collection of muslin and masks. How this is
accomplished is another matter. The spirits are not able to tell, but an
attempt has been made to indicate the methods and instruments in former
chapters. The second method is by the use of the Astral body of the living

medium. In
this case the Astral form exudes from the side of the medium, gradually
collects upon itself particles extracted from the air and the bodies of the
sitters present, until at last it becomes visible.

Sometimes it
will resemble the medium; at others it bears a different appearance. In almost
every instance dimness of light is requisite because a high light would disturb
the Astral substance in a violent manner and render the projection difficult.
Some

so-called
materializations are hollow mockeries, as they are but flat plates of
electrical and magnetic substance on which pictures from the Astral Light are
reflected. These seem to be the faces of the dead, but they are simply pictured
illusions.

If one is to
understand the psychic phenomena found in the history of
"spiritualism" it is necessary to know and admit the following:

I. The
complete heredity of man astrally, spiritually, and psychically, as a being who
knows, reasons, feels, and acts through the body, the Astral body, and the
soul.

II. The
nature of the mind, its operation, its powers; the nature and power of
imagination; the duration and effect of impressions. Most important in this is
the persistence of the slightest impression as well as the deepest; that every
impression produces a picture in the individual aura; and that by means of this
a connection is established between the auras of friends and relatives old,
new, near, distant, and remote in degree: this would give a wide range of
possible sight to a clairvoyant.

III. The
nature, extent, function, and power of man's inner Astral organs and faculties
included in the terms Astral body and Kama. That these are not hindered from
action by trance or sleep, but are increased in the medium when entranced; at
the same time their action is not free, but governed by the mass chord of
thought among the sitters, or by a predominating will, or by the presiding
devil behind the scenes; if a sceptical scientific investigator be present, his
mental attitude may totally inhibit the action of the medium's powers by what
we might call a freezing process which no English terms will adequately
describe.

IV. The fate
of the real man after death, his state, power, activity there, and his
relation, if any, to those left behind him here.

V. That the
intermediary between mind and body -- the Astral body -- is thrown off at death
and left in the Astral light to fade away; and that the real man goes to
Devachan.

VI. The
existence, nature, power, and function of the Astral light and its place as a
register in Nature. That it contains, retains, and reflects pictures of each
and every thing that happened to anyone, and also every thought; that it
permeates the globe and the atmosphere around it; that the transmission of
vibration through it is practically instantaneous, since the rate is much quicker
than that of electricity as now known.

VII. The
existence in the Astral light of beings not using bodies like ours, but not
human in their nature, having powers, faculties, and a sort of consciousness of
their own; these include the elemental forces or nature sprites divided into
many degrees, and which have to do with every operation of Nature and every
motion of the mind of man. That these elementals act at seances automatically
in their various departments, one class presenting pictures, another producing
sounds, and others depolarizing objects for the purposes of apportation. Acting
with them in this Astral sphere are the soulless men who live in it. To these
are to be ascribed the phenomenon, among others, of the "independent
voice," always sounding like a voice in a barrel just because it is made
in a vacuum which is absolutely necessary for an entity so far removed from
spirit. The peculiar timbre of this sort of voice has not been noticed by the
spiritualists as important, but it is extremely significant in the view of
occultism.

VIII. The
existence and operation of occult laws and forces in nature which may be used
to produce phenomenal results on this plane; that these laws and forces may be put
into operation by the subconscious man and by the elementals either consciously
or unconsciously, and that many of these occult operations are automatic in the
same way as is the freezing of water under intense cold or the melting of ice
under heat.

IX. That the
Astral body of the medium, partaking of the nature of the Astral substance, may
be extended from the physical body, may act outside of the latter, and may also
extrude at times any portion of itself such as hand, arm, or leg and thereby
move objects, indite letters, produce touches on the body, and so on ad
infinitum. And that the Astral body of any person may be made to feel
sensation, which, being transmitted to the brain, causes the person to think he
is touched on the outside or has heard a sound.

Mediumship is
full of dangers because the Astral part of the man is now only normal in action
when joined to the body; in distant years it will normally act without a body
as it has in the far past. To become a medium means that you have to become
disorganized physiologically and in the nervous system, because through the
latter is the connection between the two worlds.

The moment
the door is opened all the unknown forces rush in, and as the grosser part of
nature is nearest to us it is that part which affects us most; the lower nature
is also first affected and inflamed because the forces used are from that part
of us.

We are then
at the mercy of the vile thoughts of all men, and subject to the influence of
the shells in Kama Loka. If to this be added the taking of money for the
practice of mediumship, an additional danger is at hand, for the things of the
spirit and those relating to the Astral world must not be sold. This is

the great
disease of American spiritualism which has debased and degraded its whole
history; until it is eliminated no good will come from the practice; those who
wish to hear truth from the other world must devote themselves to truth and
leave all considerations of money out of sight.

To attempt to
acquire the use of the psychic powers for mere curiosity or for selfish ends is
also dangerous for the same reasons as in the case of mediumship. As the
civilization of the present day is selfish to the last degree and built on the
personal element, the rules for the development of these powers

in the right
way have not been given out, but the Masters of Wisdom have said that
philosophy and ethics must first be learned and practised before any
development of the other department is to be indulged in; and their
condemnation of the wholesale development of mediums is supported by the
history of spiritualism, which is one long story of the ruin of mediums in
every direction.

Equally
improper is the manner of the scientific schools which without a thought for
the true nature of man indulge in experiments in hypnotism in which the
subjects are injured for life, put into disgraceful attitudes, and made to do
things for the satisfaction of the investigators which would never be done by

men and women
in their normal state. The Lodge of the Masters does not care for Science
unless it aims to better man's state morally as well as physically, and no aid
will be given to Science until she looks at man and life from the moral and
spiritual side. For this reason those who know all about the psychical world,
its denizens and laws, are proceeding with a reform in morals and

philosophy
before any great attention will be accorded to the strange and seductive
phenomena possible for the inner powers of man.

And at the
present time the cycle has almost run its course for this century. Now, as a
century ago, the forces are slackening; for that reason the phenomena of
spiritualism are lessening in number and volume; the Lodge hopes by the time
the next tide begins to rise that the West will have gained some right
knowledge of the true philosophy of Man and Nature, and be then ready to bear
the lifting of the veil a little more. To help on the progress of the race in
this direction is the object of this book, and with that it is submitted to its
readers in every part of the world.